San Diego Symphony Jacobs Masterworks Series

You had to wonder Friday where the masterworks were in the San Diego Symphony’s Jacobs Masterworks concert at Copley Symphony Hall.

When Manuel de Falla’s lightweight “El amor brujo” is the heaviest work on a program that also included orchestrations of pieces by Enrique Granados and Celedonio Romero, and Gould’s “Troubadour Music for Four Guitars,” you know you’re in light classical territory, with the emphasis on light.

Nevertheless, a good time was had by just about everybody.

The Romeros — Celin, Pepe, Lito and Celino — seemed to enjoy themselves in revisiting the Gould work, which was written in 1969 for the Romeros — then Celin, Pepe, Angel and Celedonio — and the San Diego Symphony in honor of the 200th anniversary of the founding of San Diego.

The piece, apparently unheard in a San Diego concert hall since then, seems as if it’s something from a time capsule, or perhaps the soundtrack to some long lost movie. In its slightly dissonant — but just dissonant enough to be modern — idiom, it’s of a different time and place. Still, it’s an effective, if disjointed, showpiece for four guitarists and the Romeros took full advantage.

Pepe Romero also made the most of his father’s “Concierto de Malaga,” showing he’s lost none of his considerable skill over the years as he demonstrated some particularly agile fingerwork in the second movement.

Conductor Jahja Ling appeared to have a good time on the podium and the orchestra was in excellent form, particularly the woodwinds, who sounded with uncommon warmth and presence in Granados’ “Tres danzas españolas.”

Only mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves sounded unhappy. She had the assignment of singing the three out of the 13 segments of “El amor brujo” (loosely translated, “Love, the Magician”) that have a vocal part (most commonly the piece is done without those segments).

Although she is without question one of the most distinguished mezzo-sopranos of her generation, or arguably any generation, she had serious pitch problems, especially in the “Song of a Broken Heart.”

But perhaps even more alarming was the fact it sounded as if she was amplified. The symphony always has microphones around the stage, but they are ostensibly for recording (every concert is recorded for archival purposes, Ling’s consideration and potential broadcast). Her voice sounded metallic and her interpretation tentative.